The Adoption (17 page)

‘Explain yourself,’ demands my mother. And that is what I do, back-to-front words scatter falteringly from my trembling lips. The onslaught continues unabated. I have misbehaved. I have shown her up. ‘Wicked child,’ she hisses. ‘Wicked, wicked child!’ Then her close-up voice comes from all corners. ‘You are a little liar.’

The back-to-front words go heels over head out of my mouth. ‘I didn’t. I never. I wasn’t. I haven’t. I can’t.’ But even when they form an orderly queue it is futile.

Over the last months, I have stopped using the name Lucilla in an experiment of sorts. I won’t call it
my
name because it isn’t. It is not my size, like shoes that are too small. It pinches my toes and stunts my growth. I am calling myself Laura now, Laura Ryan. Denying Lucilla is causing a disproportionate amount of confusion. Henry’s adapted without much kerfuffle. Well aware of how much I loathe Lucilla, he has always abbreviated my name to Lucy. But like a severe allergy, exposure even to a syllable has begun to rankle. At work in the estate’s gift shop and in the café, they are discomfited by this new pseudonym.

‘It’s not the name on your payslip,’ the manager told me huffily the other day when I asked her outright not to call me Lucilla.

‘I realise this. But I want to be known by the name of Laura now,’ I petitioned with a winsome smile. And it took pluck because she’s a battleaxe, her blade blunted with felling a forest of staff.

Her mouth narrowed to a plughole of disapproval. ‘It doesn’t seem proper messing about with your God-given name,’ she continued disregarding me. And, oh, I did not have to simply bite my tongue here, but eat it up, every last taste bud of it. Because God didn’t give me that frilly, fussy, lisping name, a name that spoken in anger is a scream, a snake’s hiss of a name. If God had known, if he was a decent sort of bloke, he would have hurled a javelin of forked lightning, and intervened, shaking the columns of his heaven. He’d have taken it away, not given it to me. He’d have boomed, I created her and anyone can see she’s not a Lucilla. Now the manager, still in full throat, is called Constance. And it’s obvious that God didn’t just give her that name, he chucked it at her. ‘And besides’, she went on, ‘it’s muddling when I’m dealing with the council or the tax man.’

I inhaled as if it was the last cigarette before giving up the habit
evermore
. My heart was slamming in my throat, or so it seemed. All I was requesting was that she called me Laura. ‘It may seem a trifle out of the ordinary but that’s what I want.’ She worked her mouth, and the shoulder pads of her jacket shifted as if readying themselves to make a break for freedom. So far she’s avoided calling me anything at all, but I’ll fence to the end of this duel. Win or die, that’s my motto.

Maybe it is the magpie rhyme, it being three years since I got in touch with the Salvation Army, or maybe it is hearing a little girl whose name is Lucy being harshly berated for petting a dog, or possibly it is a combination of both that are the triggers. Paradoxically, I am mired in the present, unable to proceed unless I reverse. Gina is now thirty-one. I can scarcely credit it, and mother to our beautiful grand daughter, Lisa. And Tim is in and out of relationships with the ease of someone switching seats on a bus. Our children are moving on, establishing their own families, planting their own gardens. And as the demands of being their mother lessen, as their needs are met elsewhere, the void expands. I feel like an empty gourd.

For archaeologists excavating the past is irresistible. So it is for me. I kid myself that after the dig is complete, after I have finished examining the detritus of days gone by, I shall be free to decamp and vault back into the here and now. All I want … all I want is to tailor my own shadow. Is that so much to ask? And when I have, Lucilla won’t possess the tiniest particle of me. And so I get in touch with Norcap, the adoption support agency. It is the new cook in the café who refers to it quite by chance, relaying how helpful they were to an adopted friend of hers. Research on the internet soon leads me to the door of this organisation. I speak to a lovely lady on the phone, Patricia. She asks me to write in summarising my situation, and enclosing the now ubiquitous photocopies of all documentation that I currently possess.

I close by telling her how desperate I am to locate my real mother, and how welcome any assistance they provide will be. I also include
my
joining fee of thirty-five pounds. A week later and an information pack thuds on our mat. Now that I am a paid-up member of Norcap, membership number 34806, it feels as if my investigation has been legitimised. My contact leader is Hermione. Norcap advises me that adoption is frequently romanticised in fiction, in plays and in the media. They stress that the reality of tracing my birth mother may be the antithesis to any fantasy I am feeding. They underscore the value of keeping emotions reined in. They emphasise how crucial it is for the initial contact to be made by an experienced intermediary. If I do track down my mother, they urge me to come back to them and let their experts handle that fragile thread of communication on my behalf, lest, God forbid, it breaks. Shuffling through the pack again a tiny slip of paper flutters from its pages.

CHILDLINK – 12 Lion Yard, Tremadoc Road, London, SW4 7NQ
.

CHILDLINK holds the records of the following society:-

The Church Adoption Society of Bloomsbury Square and Vauxhall Bridge Road
.

A sudden pressure on my chest as if some demon has selected that moment to stamp on my heart. Childlink may have my records, my full adoption records. I may unearth more from them than I have so far from my uncommunicative adoptive parents, my conceited cousin Frank, Dorking Social Services, and the Salvation Army, from Norcap itself in fact. How many pieces of my puzzle they may supply is dizzying after so many decades. I should be euphoric. But I feel as if, out without a brolly, I have been drenched in a deluge. There is only one thing more dire than not knowing – knowing! I will write to Childlink. I will open the box and let the evils of the world fly out, all in the name of hope. But not this afternoon. Just for today let Lucilla and her history slumber on.

Chapter 13

Bethan, 1950

IT IS SUNDAY
. We go to church. We go every Sunday. I used to get bored, but now I don’t mind so much. Oh I don’t pray. I can’t pray. But I do listen. I’ve noticed that the minister preaches a tremendous lot about hell, that he gets a bit carried away describing it. His face goes red as ripe tomatoes, and his hair becomes untidy he throws his head around so much, like he’s imitating a musical conductor. He’s ever so clever with his adjectives, because I can really visualise it when I close my eyes. All fiery pits and pitchforks and people screaming in agony. Not so different from working down the mines really, I reflect wryly. Aeron gave my letter to Thorston to her dad that same day, and he gave it to my dad the next time they met. After the court, when the adoption was legal and there was no going back, he confronted me in the lounge, the letter open and in his hand. He didn’t shout. It was more vile than that. He smiled. He was smiling when he told me he’d had it all this time, since a few days after I entrusted it to Aeron, that he’d read the filth of it so often he could recite it in his sleep. He tore it up in front of me and threw it in the fire.

‘I saw two letters, Dad!’ I cried. ‘One hidden behind my letter.’

‘No, you didn’t.’ My dad denied it, riddling the fire so that the scraps of paper went up in a whoosh.’

‘Yes, I did. I did! I saw another letter in your hand. Who wrote that
letter
? Was it for me? Did he send it to me?’ I was shouting as I witnessed the flames burning brighter, gobbling up my last shred of hope. ‘Please tell me if it was him, if it was from Thorston? I have to know!’ I made a dash for the fire, but my father blocked me. I was beating my fists against his chest, and I do believe if he had stepped aside I would have thrown myself on the pyre. He shoved me backwards and I fell to floor.

‘You’re a slut,’ he said, with a smile so broad it almost fell off his face. ‘A whore. You confess your sins every day to God. You hear me, Bethan, every day you pray for forgiveness. You shan’t go to heaven, daughter. But maybe God will spare you hell and send you to purgatory, eh?’

I just nodded meekly and stared at the black ashes. There were no tears left, see. I was dry as baked stone. I couldn’t shed one, not a single one. My letters were burned up, mine to him and his to me. My dad would prefer to die than tell me where he was, where we might be reunited.

‘I shall, Dad. I shall fall on my knees and pray for forgiveness every day. I’m not good enough for heaven. I know that, Dad,’ I confessed, my head drooping. Ah, it was so heavy, my head, and I was so tired having to hold it up, so shattered with the effort.

The minister doesn’t concern himself much with heaven though, so it’s not so easy to envisage that. But I do have a go sometimes. I sketch green fields in my head, dot them with flowers, all colours, very pretty, you know. And the air is perfumed with the fragrance of dry hay on a warm evening. There are babbling silver streams, and a haze of lavender mountains, and a sky that’s like a wash of buttermilk. I stroll along barefoot. There are no stones and the grass is cool and spongy like a cushion under the soles of my feet. What strikes me about my feelings as I wander through heaven is that there aren’t any. No hunger, no thirst, no tiredness … no anguish, and no guilt. No guilt!
The
thousands of nails of guilt that have been embedded so deep into my flesh that I don’t think they’ll ever come out, aren’t there. I’m smooth as a peach.

Anyway I don’t want to go to heaven. I’ve made up my mind. It’ll only be full of Brice, and Mam and Dad, and the adoptive parents, and my baby. I’m going to roast in hell. It’s where I belong. By the way, I can’t spot God in the heaven I’ve constructed. I’ve had a good hunt but he’s nowhere to be seen. I’m not dreadfully sure what he looks like. But I am certain that I’ll recognise him if he appears. My knees throb after the service and that’s a good sign of repentance, don’t you agree? Despite not being able to pray, I do believe God might take that into account. Sore knees. When we get back to the farm, it’s my habit to head upstairs to change into my dungarees and start work. Then a Sunday morning arrives when Dad waylays me.

‘Not today, Bethan. I want you to stay dressed up,’ he says terrible serious.

I pause and swivel on the stairs, bewildered by his request. ‘But, Dad, there’s so much to do,’ I protest. I can smell dinner cooking. We’re having roast pork, and the delicious aroma is making my mouth water.

‘Never mind that,’ my dad tells me. ‘We’ve company coming for lunch. I want you to look presentable.’

‘Oh,’ I say, none the wiser. He’s wearing his suit. Normally, he’d be first in line to take it off, hang it up and slip into his comfortable clothes. But now he hovers in front of the hall mirror, whips out a comb from his top pocket and pulls it through the tangle of his grey hair. ‘Who’s coming then, Dad?’ I ask. We don’t often have guests for a meal. And I can’t help feeling on account of how jumpy my dad is, that it must be someone really important.

‘Mr Sterry,’ he says, eyes shuttered so I can’t see the expression in them.

‘Oh,’ I repeat, mystified. Of course I know Mr Sterry. He lives at Carwyn Farm over Hebron way. He’s a contractor, an agricultural contractor. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? But it only means that he organises the hire of farming equipment, extra labourers, that kind of thing. He’s been over here several times in the last months. Not that I’ve spoken to him, you understand. Besides they’ve been fleeting visits, business trips. He’s not family, not a friend.

‘Mr Sterry? Are you thrashing out a deal with him, Dad?’ I feel timid but I want a reply, an answer to dispel my unease.

‘Mmm … one or two things to discuss,’ my dad replies, vaguely shuffling his feet. He’s in a peculiar frame of mind. Sort of awkward, nervy. Not his commanding self at all. ‘I want you to let down your hair,’ he adds. ‘It looks well like that.’

It as though an organist has slammed his arms down on the keys and the chords are blaring out altogether. Since London, I’ve been invisible to my dad, invisible to myself as well actually. He makes me feel as if I’m no more substantial than a puff of smoke. My hair and the style it’s in is of no interest to him whatsoever. I’ve pinned it up today. I’ve ceased fussing with it. When I’m working, I knot it in a headscarf. Otherwise, I tie it back or plait it. ‘All … all right,’ I stammer. ‘If that’s what you want, Dad.’

‘I do,’ he maintains stoutly, sliding the comb back in his pocket. ‘When you’re ready come down and help your mam.’

I nod. Minutes later, as I stand before the bathroom mirror pulling out hairpins, I catch sight of myself. My hands are all aquiver. It’s like the moment a deer freezes, the moment it scents the air sniffing change, the hunter, death. When I join Mam and start peeling carrots, my appetite, so acute earlier that I could taste the sweet tender pork on my tongue, has disappeared. I know a mouthful of bread would choke me if I tried to swallow it now. After an hour, Mr Sterry arrives in his green pickup. Mam goes to greet him and leaves me supervising the dinner.
When
she gets back, my dad calls me into the front room. I go as if my feet are clad in iron boots. I shake hands with Mr Sterry, and he says that I must call him Leslie. I nod, but I can’t. He’s one of my dad’s colleagues and I don’t use their first names. It seems a liberty. For a few minutes, he and my dad talk business, milk yields, hoof rot and the weather. But his eyes keep drifting over to me, eyes the colour of our oak dresser. I hear pots and pans clang in the kitchen and get up.

‘P’rhaps I’d better go and give Mam a hand,’ I excuse myself.

‘She can spare you for a while,’ my dad rejoins curtly. ‘Sit back down, Bethan, will you.’

And so I lower myself back into my seat. I grasp the arms tightly, like I’m in a rowing boat being tossed about in a storm. I’d say Mr Sterry is about thirty, taller than average, with sloping shoulders. He has a wide face and small sticking-out ears. He’s missing one of his front teeth, and his tongue constantly probes the gap. He has a large nose, with a smattering of blackheads on its blunt tip. And he has dark sticking-up hair, cut short and parted at the side. His hairline is receding. But it’s not that apparent because he has a sort of fringe that hangs down. His eyebrows are dark and bushy, and his brown eyes are small and deep set. They are not unkind but they are straightforward. He is, I think, peeking at him jawing with my dad, a man’s man, a man who sees the world as an ordered place.